the third-party procurement architecture
He had tried to stop smoking marijuana maybe 70 or 80 times before. Before this woman knew him. She did not know he had tried to stop. He always lasted a week, or two weeks, or maybe two days, and then he’d think and decide to have some in his home one more last time. One last final time he’d search out someone new, someone he hadn’t already told that he had to stop smoking dope and please under no circumstances should they procure him any dope. It had to be a third party, because he’d told every dealer he knew to cut him off. And the third party had to be someone all-new, because each time he got some he knew this time had to be the last time, and so told them, asked them, as a favor, never to get him any more, ever.
Context
The compulsion's whole logistical scaffolding stated in one breath: not seventy or eighty relapses but seventy or eighty last times, each one a fresh recruitment of a stranger because every prior supplier has been sworn off in the same ceremony of resolve. The system is airtight and self-perpetuating precisely because the addict is sincere every single time — the "one more last time" is not a lie he tells the dealer, it is the belief that makes the next call necessary.